After effectively barring conservative columnist Ann Coulter from speaking on campus last week, the Jesuit college Fordham University welcomed infanticide and bestiality advocate Peter Singer for a panel discussion on Friday.

According to Fordhams media relations website, Singer, a tenured Princeton bioethics professor, spoke from 4 to 6 p.m. in a panel the university promised will provoke Christians to think about other animals in new ways.

Singer has long lamented the societal stigma against having sex with animals.

Not so long ago, Singer wrote in one essay, any form of sexuality not leading to the conception of children was seen as, at best, wanton lust, or worse, a perversion. One by one, the taboos have fallen. But not every taboo has crumbled.

In the essay, titled Heavy Petting, Singer concluded that sex across the species barrier, while not normal, ceases to be an offence [sic] to our status and dignity as human beings.

Occasionally mutually satisfying activities may develop when humans have sex with their pets, he claimed.

In addition to supporting bestiality and immediately granting equal legal rights to animals, Singer has also advocated euthanizing the mentally ill and aborting disabled infants on utilitarian grounds.

In his 1993 essay Taking Life, Singer, in a section called Justifying Infanticide and Non-Voluntary Euthanasia, wrote that killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person.

Very often it is not wrong at all, he added, noting that newborns should not be considered people until approximately a month after their birth.

Both Singer and his supporters maintain that ethics experts must often confront taboo topics to arrive at greater philosophical truths.

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